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1. INTRODUCTION
Research Background
Humans are social creatures who cannot live alone. One of the important requirements for humans as social beings that is communications needed. Nowadays, people really need to communicate
with other people. Communication is needed to get any kind of information and to switch information one to another. One of communication tools are now often used by humans to
communicate over long distances is a mobile phone. Over time, the mobile phone continues to innovate by looking at human needs with communication continues to increase. And now we can
see mobile phone has been metamorphosed to device called Smartphone.
Smartphone almost used by all people around the world. Because of the big demand on long distance communication makes smartphone users increase. Because of the high population in
Indonesia make the users of smartphone are at the same state too, quite much than other ASEAN countries. People buy a smartphone not only because of their needs, but also consider about
another aspect of the smartphone. Such as the model or design, color, or the feature that exist in the smartphone. Not only because of that, when consumer selecting the smartphone, they also
consider about the brand image, perceive quality and the country of origin of the smartphone.
Hsieh, Pan, and Setiono 2004 argued, brand image helps consumer in recognizing their needs and satisfaction regarding the brand, it also distinguishes the brand from other rivals motivating
customer to buy the brand. Brand image is very important because it serves to explain the character of the company and the products or services of the company. Consumer consider that a
product of superior brand has far better quality than other brand product.
Quality can be defined broadly as superiority or excellence, by extension, perceive quality can be defined as the consumers judgment about a products overall excellence or superiority Zeithaml,
1988. People tent to buy things or in this case smartphone that have good quality and not easily broken in order to be used for quite long time.
All the smartphone brand that already entered in Indonesia, not only have brand different but also have country of origin different. Country-of-origin is defined as the country where the product is
made. Country-of-origin can be consumers evaluate judgments of the products. When consumers have experienced with the products that have good quality, customers got positive perception of
the country that the products is made. For the example, people usually have positive perception about some countries with good technology can make a good product of smartphone. It makes the
country of origin into consideration for the customers in deciding which smartphone they want to buy.
Manado is one of the city in Indonesia that became the target of smartphone sales market. Right now, in Manado city it is easy to find so many smartphone brands, such as
Apple, Samsung, Sony, LG, Blackberry, Asus, Oppo, and Lenovo, Evercoss, Mito and many more. With many companies
that sell their smartphone product in Manado, it is making an issue and challenge at the same time for those company among the same circle because they have to compete with each other. Based
on the background above, the title of this research is “The influence of Brand Image, Perceived Quality and Country of Origin toward Consumer Purchase Decision of Smartphone Product in
Manado”.
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Research Objective
1. To analyze if there is a simultaneous effect of Brand Image, Perceived Quality and Country of Origin have significant effect on Consumer Purchase Decision of Smartphone Product
in Manado. 2. To analyze if there is a partial effect of Brand Image on Consumer Purchase Decision.
3. To analyze if there is a partial effect of Perceived Quality on Consumer Purchase Decision. 4. To analyze if there is a partial effect of Country of Origin on Consumer Purchase Decision.
Theoretical Framework Marketing
Kotler and Armstrong 2012 defines marketing as the process by which companies create value for customer and build strong customer relationship in order to capture value from customer in
return. According to Chawla 2003 the key points of marketing are managerial process involving analysis, plan, and control to carefully formulate the program instead of randomly act, selecting
target market, rather than quixotic attempts, and the purpose of marketing is to achieve organizational objectives.
Brand Image
Keller 1993 considered brand image as a set of perception about a brand as reflected by brand associations in consumer’s memory. According to Tepeci 1999, a good and strong brand image
which comprises of logo, color and motto is very crucial for all retailers and customers to differentiate one product from others. So, brand image is the consumer perception or picture of a
product in consumer’s mind that have high impact toward the product profitability and popularity especially in the part of marketing
Perceived Quality
Perceived quality is a critical element for consumer decision making; consequently, consumers will compare the quality of alternatives with regard to price within a category Jin and Yong,
2005. Bhuian 1997 argues that Perceived quality is a judgment on the consistency of product specification or an evaluation on added value of a product. Based from the experts explanation, it
tells that perception quality is very important toward the successfulness of a company and the perception quality is created when consumer feel the advantage of a product or services.
Country of Origin
The country-of-origin defined as the country where the location of head office of the corporation marketing the product or brand is in the country itself Aydin et al, 2007. Country of origin has
become a significant phenomenon in consumer behavior studies recently. Originally, the concept of Country-of- Origin COO was considered as the Made-in country Nebenzahl et al., 1997.
Therefore, country of origin putting great value in consumers mind of a product or services because it can be a reliable product if it comes from development country by putting trust value
to the consumer.
Previous Research
Liu T-L 2005 indicated that different country-of-origin image appealing or unappealing, price level high or low, and advertising information content abundant or usual had different impact
on consumer purchase behavior e.g., perceived sacrifice, perceived value, and perceived
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H2
H3 H4
H1
intention. Findings also specify that among the three extrinsic cues, advertising information content was most highly stressed, and the next was country-of-origin image, and price level was
least stressed. Ghani et al 2008 shows that the country of origin of a product has a considerable influence on the quality perceptions of a product. It can be seen that consumer’s perceptions of
various countries are related to product quality, and tend to be product specific as well as country specific. The study shows that in different categories, different countries have highest demand for
its products, Japan is preferred for watches and electronic items, Pakistan for fabrics and Finland for Mobile Phones. It can be seen that consumers’ perceptions of various countries are related to
inferences of product quality, and tend to be product specific as well as country specific.
2. RESEARCH METHOD
